


Prelude to SPELL BOUND

by boroughs



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Doctor Strange (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Marvel Universe, Post-Doctor Strange (2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25568197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boroughs/pseuds/boroughs
Summary: This is the prologue chapter to my Doctor Strange story, Spell Bound. I advise reading this first and then jumping straight into SPELL BOUND, as it picks right back up.
Relationships: Stephen Strange & Original Female Character(s), Stephen Strange/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 6





	Prelude to SPELL BOUND

**Katherine** found herself unable to sleep again.

Many nights were spent like this—lying awake in bed, drowning in the ambiance of shadows made by passing cars as they bind themselves to the walls of one's bedroom. There was something soothing and peaceful about the aching loneliness that she felt and she had come to resent herself for it.

No one should waltz to a soundless, empty world, but Katherine held her hand out eagerly to be swept away into a performance that she hoped last forever.

It was the quiet that made things normal; the quiet that made things **_real_**.

Her eyes began to sting and she delicately released the grip on her thoughts; they bid her a quick farewell and gyrated their liveliness with the penumbras. A sigh parted her rose-colored lips and the sound of rain tip-toed down her ears, combining with the roaring engines and life of Greenwich Village. The corners of her mouth faintly curled upwards and she turned to face the window, wanting to see the private performance the rain offered her.

Any **normal** person would've bounced at the first occurrence of peculiarity, but not Katherine.

She had begun to appreciate the company of such abnormalities that presented themselves before her so willingly. Perhaps, that's what attracted her to Greenwich in the first place; it was filled with strange things and she swore that whenever the stars came into view, they were witch lights.

The brown-haired woman let out a soft chuckle as the silly thought tip-toed across her mind and vanished all the same. Katherine began closing her eyes and her mind led its own self astray once again, as water-born silhouettes silently took the stool of her bedroom window as their stage, dancing and performing scenes from she knew not where. She smiled once more and finally, but surely, allowed herself to succumb to slumber.

As the waking world left her sordid, the dreaming one welcomed her warmly and she saw herself gallivanting in the spirals of a very distant memory; she recalled her last day as a nurse in Seattle.

☽

The desk clerk had gone on her lunch break for the evening, so Katherine offered to sit in for her until she returned. She hadn't mind, since the clerk was an elderly lady and this was a rather slow day. People came in maybe once or twice every five minutes with the common cold, stomach aches, asking if a obvious sign of sunburn was a deadly rash or sign of some underlying disease—the usual, really.

It was around the thirty minute mark that things took a drastic turn.

A young boy, maybe no more than twelve or thirteen, rushed into the emergency room. He had nearly knocked over someone that was walking in before him—they cursed at him, but he ignored it as he approached the desk were gathering was with wide eyes and baited breathe. His entire appearance was disheveled; he had smears of dirt across his face, his lips were so dry that they had begun to crack and their were dark circles under his eyes.

He had the look of someone older—someone who had bared witnessed to a perverted sense of reality. Whatever it had been, it had scarred the boy; he would be traumatized for the rest of his life.

A metallic smell rested itself in Katherine nostrils and she wrinkled her nose. The distraught boy smelled like her grandfather's change charge that he kept in the window of his study; the morning sun hit the jar and by the afternoon the entire room would smell of copper.

It made Katherine pull her face back in disgust as the scent mixed in with the smells of bleach and disinfectant—she swore there were tidbits of urine and feces in the air, but didn't linger on it. She slowly made her way from around desk, eyes steady on the child until she had a full-body view. He was wearing hunting gear and there were stains on the arms and cargo pants; even his boots were colored with it.

 _'Oh god,'_ She had thought. _'Had he gone out alone? Was there an accident? Was it_ ** _his_** _blood?'_

"It's not mine," his voice was low, hoarse, scratching the back of his throat. "Something happened to my dad and I-I came here to get help. I don't know if..."

His eyes damped as he continued, "I...I ran as fast as I c-could I didn't know what to do...I didn't know..."

Katherine opened her mouth to say something, but paused as she saw the young boy stare off. He hadn't blink not once since he had came into the emergency room; it was as if he retreated inside himself, instead of being grounded in reality. This child was frightened; was **terrified** of whatever he had seen. He was trembling like someone suffering from hypothermia; Katherine pressed her lips together tightly as she quietly continued to study the young boy.

"Hey," She began softly, enunciating each syllable as she placed a careful hand on his shoulder.

"Take your time. It's alright. What's your name?"

His eyes darted towards the mechanical doors as they slid open, allowing other people to come in. Sweat perspired down his face as his gaze held the on the door; it was as if he was dreading the inevitable—he was waiting for someone to come.

Or, _something._

His attention quickly snapped to her like a startled fawn. "E-Elliot."

Katherine gently rubbed his arm to comfort him. "Alright, Elliot, my name's Katherine. I'm a nurse here at the hospital. No one's going to hurt you here, you're safe now. I'm going to need you to tell me everything you can about what happened, so I can alert the authorities."

"M-me a-a-and my dad went h-hunting and s-something attacked him real bad." Elliot was sobbing now, hiccuping between his words, between each stutter.

"I-I-I don't k-k-know if my d-d-d-d-dad is even o-o-okay. I just r-r-ran h-h-here for h-h-help."

It was then that she saw the thing that terrorized young Elliot and his father.

A stern look came down on her face and the young boy's voice drifted away, as she eyed the foreign visitor. No one else could see it looming tall in the center of the emergency room—except her and Elliot. However, he had been so focused on telling Katherine what happened, it was only her and this otherworldly being watching one another.

She blinked and it was gone.

Katherine snapped her head back to Elliot and forced a gentle smile. "Let's get you checked into make sure you didn't injury yourself coming here. What you did was really brave and I'm sure your dad is very proud of you."

Elliot remained quiet as Katherine got up, dusting off her pants. The desk clerk was back from her lunch break and Katherine saw her staring at both her and the young boy wide-eyed and cautious. Katherine signaled at the woman with a nod of her head to call for a doctor.

"Do you have anyone you can call?" Katherine turned her attention back to Elliot. He held his head down, staring at the mixture of blood, clay and dirt that caked his boots.

☽

Elliot had dozed off by the time his father was rushed into the hospital. Katherine had called his mother, since and told her of what happened; naturally, she was distraught and it was in the same breathe Katherine had spoke to her, that she was at the hospital demanding to see her son. She came in cursing the day that she agreed to joint custody with Malcolm; Katherine remained silent and kept her comments to herself as she escorted her to the room where her son resided. Elliot had three broken ribs and a fractured wrist, but somehow managed to make his way to the hospital without stopping or focusing on the pain his body was going through.

Katherine considered him bravery than most, for such a young child. A soft smile spread across her face as she glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping boy and his mother that seated next to him. However, her mind lingered on the creature she had seen in the waiting area of the ER. It was some sort of apparition, at least that is how is appeared to Katherine. It loomed like a dilapidated building at the crossroad between the hereafter and the now; it's body emitted spirals of black smoke and orange embers glowed in the place of lungs. Katherine wondered where it had gone, that featureless, voiceless creature from unknown regions of existence.

They found Malcolm Greenwood lying in a ditch disemboweled—his legs had been twisted to abnormal shapes and his sternum was crushed; it was a 'divine' miracle that he was even alive. Barely, but alive. Katherine, herself, had not seen this, but the other nurses had and she overheard them to discussing among themselves.

 _'That's horrific',_ She had thought in her passing. _'No one should still be alive after that. Something isn't right here.'_

Foot steps approached steadfast and Katherine snapped herself back to reality. She looked up and it was Doctor Jennings with a solemn look on his face; she frowned and he nodded as if to answer a question that had not even parted her lips. They shared a quiet understanding and he entered the room to give the news.

"Mrs. Greenwood?"

Elliot's mother looked at the doctor from her seat. "Yes?"

"I know that this is a situation that neither you, your son and his father were expecting to befall you tonight," Jennings inhaled and exhaled sharply. "The injuries that your husband suffered—"

"Ex-husband."

Jennings paused slightly, but continued. "...have left him in a state where he is clinging to life, but no longer with us here. It is my suggestion that you come say your goodbyes."

Suddenly, there was a stinging loudness that rung in Katherine's ears, but she did not know where to pinpoint it. It vibrated the very foundations of her body; it was all around. The others hadn't seemed to notice it, but she did—she felt it. With each low, crescendo, the scene that had been remotely playing itself before her paused and skipped over itself. Each one soon after causing fragmentation after fragmentation, until nothing existed except she and the voices of vanished bodies. The conversation between Ms. Greenwood and Dr. Jennings rehearsed unto itself verbatim, becoming murky with each drawn out syllable. Contorting visage after visage threw itself at Katherine in bursts of fast colors, of blind lights from all spectral dimensions.

She stared in confusion at the unbecoming until she was saw herself mimicking her the same action. There was a loudness that rung in Katherine's ears, but she had not known where it came from; it echoed between the spaces of waking and dreaming; it snared Katherine's primordial essence until she burst awake in bed with baited breathes, thunder and lighting tip-toeing after one another across the New York skyline.

Reality had presented itself boldly and Katherine found herself awake, again. Flashing hues of blues and whites glistened as reflections on her window, with a growling hubris following in suit—she shook her head, realizing it was the midsummer's storm that had pulled her back. She ran a shaky hand through locks of chocolate mahogany and sighed. It was awhile before she moved or said anything—that was until movement gyrated itself into her peripheral.

She snapped her head into a dark corner of her room and found eyes of emerald, begetting of a lingering silhouette watching her. It was reminiscent of her encounter with the creature from the waiting room, except this time the presence was benign and she wondered if what lay at the end of that darkness saw her too. Unnerved, she eased out of bed and carefully walked closer and closer to those mesmerizing eyes that offered something unknown to her.

They watched back, squinting at her confused—bewildered by her actions

And when she reached out to the perverted shadows, thunder bellowed and and those eyes turned away and soon after disappeared until she was yet again, left alone.

And it was at that same time, with the sound of that raging thunderstorm, at the address of 177A Bleeker Street, that Stephen Strange unwillingly bid farewell to his unknown watcher, having yet not know what fate had decided for either of them.


End file.
